Any discussion of prior art throughout the specification should in no way be considered as an admission that such prior art is widely known or forms part of common general knowledge in the field.
A transaction service is a service, sometimes packaged as a product, which generally enables a purchase transaction by a customer or provides a possible benefit based on the items purchased. A payment transaction service is a type of transaction service that enables a purchase transaction by directly or indirectly providing an electronic payment for the purchase transaction. Indirectly providing payment means the service is linked to a credit or debit card that makes the payment. A digital wallet service or product is a form of payment transaction service. Examples of companies that provide payment transaction services are PayPal®, Kuapay®, VISA® (V.me®) and MasterCard® (PayPass®). In addition, companies like Google®, Apple, Microsoft®, Intuit® and Square® either have or plan to have a payment transaction service.
Another type of transaction service provides a benefit to a customer based on the items purchased by the customer. Loyalty programs are an example of one type of a benefit transaction service. Companies offer loyalty programs that are designed to reward and encourage customers that exhibit purchase behaviors that are beneficial to the companies. For a loyalty program to perform as designed, the program must be able to track customer purchases related to the program so it can identify purchase behaviors. All types of companies and organizations have implemented loyalty programs and most have their own unique system. The following are some examples of the types of businesses that have implemented loyalty programs: convenience stores, movie theaters, book stores, car rentals, airlines, grocery stores, DVD rentals, motels, hotels, fast food restaurants, gas stations, department stores and online retailers just to list a few.
Merchants can attract customers by making it easy for customers to select and use different payment products and by making it easy for a customer to quickly receive any benefits that may be available for the items being purchased. It is normal for a transaction service to charge a merchant a fee for each transaction and possibly a membership fee to use a transaction service. However, there is an additional indirect expense associated with supporting the different transaction services that is not related to these direct fees paid to the transaction services. The indirect expense relates to the cost of supporting software that can communicate and interact with each of the different transaction services. The indirect expenses include the cost of adding program support for a new transaction service which involves purchasing new software or updates to existing software plus the cost of installing and testing. Additionally, there is the cost of downtime during installation and the cost to train operators on the new software. There are also indirect costs associated with removing a transaction service.